[HN Gopher] Modern automotive electronics will lead to a mechani...
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Modern automotive electronics will lead to a mechanical revolution
[video]
Author : walterbell
Score : 57 points
Date : 2023-12-02 03:14 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| tw04 wrote:
| Just, no. A taillight short doesn't cause the radio not to work
| because of canbus. I have no idea what this nonsense is doing
| here but a guy advocating for carbureted ICE engines because
| "computers and electronics bad" in 2023 shouldn't be take
| seriously on this site of all places.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I can easily imagine how that particular fault could occur. So
| I wouldn't rule out this particular complaint without having a
| thorough look at the schematic of the vehicle involved to see
| through what pathways the CAN bus or the radio itself (usually
| on a separate bus, but not always) could be drawn high or low.
| That's the problem with a bus: if you force it low or high
| that's effectively a denial-of-service.
|
| I've had a case recently where a radio locked up hard because
| of a CAN bus issue that had nothing to do with the radio at
| all... (2005 MB CLS). That was quite the headscratcher and it
| took multiple people with a lot of gear to debug the problem to
| the point that we figured out what the culprit was (a little
| box on the main CAN bus embedded quite far away from the radio
| that apparently controlled the power to the console portion).
| pvg wrote:
| _That 's the problem with a bus: if you force it low or high
| that's effectively a denial-of-service._
|
| This obviously doesn't always happen in reality but CAN is
| supposed detect/deal with that - pegged bus should be
| detectable, bad nodes are supposed to float, etc.
| jacquesm wrote:
| In the presence of moisture and a pulsed LED driver all
| bets are off.
| chongli wrote:
| CANbus is on the way out. The future of networking in cars is
| Ethernet. A proper switched network with TSN [1] can
| dramatically cut down on the amount of copper in the car
| while increasing bandwidth and reliability.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-Sensitive_Networking
| jacquesm wrote:
| My car has a regular good old wiring hardness to the rear
| lights and there isn't any electronics in there. For
| increased reliability.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| It can and does. I had a 2021 Ford Transit with a non working
| front passenger turn signal. I figured at best maybe a bad
| assembly, at worst, maybe something was up with lighting
| module.
|
| Nope. Turns out the light shorted and killed my cluster while
| it was at it. It was under warranty so no cost there, but it
| would've easily set me back almost $2k for parts and labor.
|
| I work on cars a lot, and if I wasn't a software engineer, I'd
| be a mechanic (I'm actually going to be opening a restoration
| shop in the next few years). Basically every system on the CAN
| bus is integrated with every other system and even if they
| aren't, there is a ton of cross pollination of systems you'd
| never expect.
|
| That same van had a feature that would turn down the a/c blower
| if you received a phone call so as to not be too loud. Neat
| feature but i was just counting the days before that somehow
| cause my radio, a/c or car control module to go belly up.
| blastersyndrome wrote:
| ...but that _is_ what happened. Ford designed a car that
| bricked itself if that failure mode occurred. Whether it was
| born out of malice or incompetence does not matter.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I remember watching this video a few months ago. As I write this
| I am debugging open source electronics I designed for our open
| source farming robot.
|
| It seems like people see the growth in opaque proprietary
| electronics and they conclude that we should move back to old
| mechanical systems. But mechanical systems are not always more
| reliable.
|
| What I really want more people to understand is that electronics
| are not the issue - proprietary designs are. Open source designs
| inherently have enough documentation that even if they don't come
| with some nice service manual, the nerds on the user forum can
| dig through the schematics and code to sort out what's what.
|
| Unfortunately open source hardware just isn't getting enough
| coverage for people to really see the value in it, despite the
| entire internet being built on open source software. We need to
| find ways to communicate the power of open source beyond
| software. We could have open source modules in cars with open
| standards. Sure the manufacturers need a rugged PCB that can
| control lights, read sensors, interact with CAN BUS, etc. But
| there is no need for that system to be proprietary. We need to
| build and demonstrate the value of open source hardware to help
| people understand what is really possible. Because the call to
| move back to mechanical systems is really just a call to move
| back to systems that are intuitively understandable, and today's
| shadetree mechanics can read a forum post as well as anyone else.
| What we need are open, documented systems. Electronics are not
| the enemy, proprietary systems are.
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| Say what you will about Musk, but he's making an effort in this
| regard. He has open sourced a number of goodies with Tesla.
| bsder wrote:
| Um, last I checked, the repository was a bunch of PDF user
| manuals.
|
| Has that changed?
| conradev wrote:
| Isn't Tesla actively hostile towards charging network
| interoperability?
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| No. They have opened source the schematics for their
| chargers and welcome other manufacturers to use their
| charger design.
|
| https://www.tesla.com/support/charging/product-guides
| conradev wrote:
| Open source schematics and a closed Supercharger network
| until this year, at least in the US. It's hard to
| separate Tesla's intentions in opening up their charging
| network from the legislation in both the US and EU
| incentivizing it.
| vikramkr wrote:
| No they did actually follow through on the charging stuff
| to the point where NACS is now the new north American
| standard, which is kind of wild to see given how they've
| acted before.
| PinguTS wrote:
| Funfact: NACS ist just CCS with a different physical
| connector. You just need to read and understand the specs.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Be careful about that. Just last week he lied about open
| sourcing the original roadster. Musk very clearly said "all
| design and engineering for the original roadster is open
| source" but that statement is false. There's a few PCB
| designs available and one diagnostic program, but there are
| zero mechanical designs and I suspect there are missing
| firmwares, among other things. Given these glaring omissions
| (and Musk is certainly qualified to understand what "all
| design and engineering" means), I suspect there is a trove of
| other "design and engineering" documentation that is missing
| as well.
|
| I believe none of the cars shipping today contain any open
| source electronics. Teslas are notoriously full of very
| expensive proprietary electronics. He has indeed released
| some "goodies" but is nonetheless as bad as every other
| shipping car manufacturer today.
|
| It is honestly hard to say he is making an effort when he is
| so blatantly lying about the roadster and his other vehicles
| are completely proprietary. Not saying he is worse than the
| other companies, but I can't give him credit for something he
| is not doing.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > Musk is certainly qualified to understand what "all
| design and engineering" means
|
| I'd say there is a mountain of evidence from SpaceX and
| Tesla that's not actually true and that he has little to no
| understanding of anything related to engineering, nor the
| ability to manage engineering teams effectively; I think
| he's surrounded by people that are actually talented and do
| a lot to scrambling to make stuff happen and fix his
| messes.
|
| The huge 'box' his demanded his team put together, to
| rescue people from a cave with passages so narrow diver
| could not wear tanks on their backs? To me that
| demonstrates he has no ability to analyze a problem at high
| level and correctly apply the engineering resources
| available to him.
|
| Examples:
|
| * Dishy, which had basic design flaws, such as a
| permanently attached power/data cable that if damaged meant
| you had to purchase an entire new unit
|
| * Hyperloop.
|
| * SpaceX's repeated failures, which they spin as "it's
| okay, we meant to fuck up, _we got data_! ", including the
| disaster where his insistence on launching on 4/20 resulted
| in substantial vehicle damage (5-8 rockets failed), heavy
| damage to the facility, a 380 acre wide debris field (so
| severe you could see debris landing in the ocean from an
| aerial shot well outside the launch danger zone), a forest
| fire, and heavy damage to a car (parked within the "hazard
| area.")
|
| * Musk's repeated production-related issues at Tesla, and
| his insistence on automating as much as possible even when
| experts in their field who work for him tell him it's not
| possible
|
| * Repeated demonstrations of engineering incompetence at
| Telsa. The Model S drivetrain units used to be disposable
| and would be quietly replaced during routine service at
| anywhere from 10-30k miles. They still can't make a Tesla
| with proper body panel gaps. People have found bits of
| wood/wire/duct tape holding their Tesla's guts together.
| For years Model S's couldn't be driven in heavy rain or
| through large puddles without water ending up in the drive
| units. Windows randomly shattering while cars are parked in
| driveways and garages. Etc
| petertodd wrote:
| > The huge 'box' his demanded his team put together, to
| rescue people from a cave with passages so narrow diver
| could not wear tanks on their backs? To me that
| demonstrates he has no ability to analyze a problem at
| high level and correctly apply the engineering resources
| available to him.
|
| The solution they came up with for those kids was
| extremely risky, involving drugging them and hoping they
| didn't drown in their face masks. It had never been done
| before in cave rescue history, and no-one really knew if
| it would actually work.
|
| Cave passages can be widened. It's actually quite common
| for cave rescues to involve widening passages. It's also
| relatively common for cavers to do that in general as
| part of ordinary exploration - I personally have helped
| widen an impassibly narrow passage with explosives
| myself. And yes, this is done underwater too.
|
| If the drugging solution had resulted in a kid drowning,
| there is a very good chance that the submarine solution
| would have been used.
|
| > Dishy, which had basic design flaws, such as a
| permanently attached power/data cable that if damaged
| meant you had to purchase an entire new unit
|
| That sounds like a typical engineering/marketing
| decision: rather than coming up with a tricky waterproof
| connector, just seal it permanently and sell the user a
| new one if they break it. Starlink as a whole has been
| very successful.
|
| > SpaceX's repeated failures, which they spin as "it's
| okay, we meant to fuck up, we got data!", including the
| disaster where his insistence on launching on 4/20
| resulted in substantial vehicle damage (5-8 rockets
| failed), heavy damage to the facility, a 380 acre wide
| debris field (so severe you could see debris landing in
| the ocean from an aerial shot well outside the launch
| danger zone), a forest fire, and heavy damage to a car
| (parked within the "hazard area.")
|
| SpaceX is probably the most successful aerospace company
| in history., and they have some of the most reliable
| orbital rockets in history. Obviously their focus on
| meeting schedules and iterating is working for them. They
| just launched Starship again with even more success, and
| will probably do so yet again in a few more months. I
| really don't think SpaceX themselves care about
| occasionally spreading some debris around, setting some
| trees on fire, and damaging a car in the designated
| hazard area. There's lots of rocket engineers that have
| managed to destroy their own cars because their rockets
| failed and debris hit the employee parking lot.
| buildbot wrote:
| Aren't they still violating linux's GPL license?
| boznz wrote:
| Totally nailed it. Without the information on proprietary
| systems to repair them or effect the cars re-use (if say doing
| an EV conversion), the car or anything becomes either a massive
| reverse engineering problem or landfill once the manufacturer
| stops supporting it.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Is there a way to support your effort?
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Thank you, yes. Here is a blog post with more information
| about what we are doing [1] and a direct link to our funding
| page [2]. We are working on moving to a fully donation
| supported engineering model so our work can be freely
| available for everyone the world over, and your monthly
| contributions make a big difference. Also here is our github
| with our electronics, software, and hardware designs all
| permissively licensed. [3] Notably our open source dual
| brushless motor controller design is coming along nicely. [4]
|
| [1] https://community.twistedfields.com/t/join-the-solar-
| farming...
|
| [2] https://opencollective.com/twisted-fields-research-
| collectiv...
|
| [3] https://github.com/Twisted-Fields
|
| [4] https://github.com/Twisted-Fields/rp2040-motor-controller
| jacquesm wrote:
| Very neat! Electric goat :)
|
| How weather resistant is it? Is it aware of its
| surroundings yet (for instance: irrigation installations)?
| Are any of these in use outside of the people that develop
| them?
|
| (sorry for the questions barrage but if I didn't live on
| another continent I'd hop over to help). Nice Al welding
| btw.
| hommelix wrote:
| You are right on openness. This is key to understand and fix
| broken machines. Mechanical designs used to be more open too.
| We bought tractors in the 1980's and these would come with a
| workshop manual with parts list and disassembly / assembly
| instructions, with tools list and torque requirement.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| You're right. Televisions used to be more repairable too. I
| found a microfiche reader by a dumpster and for fun ordered a
| lot of 100+ microfiche cards from an old TV repair shop on
| ebay. Zenith for example published detailed repair manuals
| including detailed steps for recalibration, parts lists,
| schematics, annotated PCB layouts, and more. These were for
| repair shops not the average person, but modern TV companies
| don't even produce those materials anymore.
| trilbyglens wrote:
| Nope they are far cheaper to just throw away and replace.
| It's a terrible system.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Honestly I only think it's cheaper to replace because
| we've made repair more expensive than it needs to be.
| I've fixed two TVs that stopped working with a few
| dollars of capacitors and my own time. That's much
| cheaper than buying a new TV! But I had to go digging
| through forums when manufacturers could have provided
| this information. Instead they refuse ti share info and
| charge extreme prices for repairs where they will just
| throw out an entire board with one bad component which
| would cost 20 cents on its own.
|
| I agree it's a terrible system I just wanted to clarify
| that the "it costs less to throw it out and replace"
| narrative is only true so long as we make it true.
| benj111 wrote:
| Even within a non repairable system, it could be improved
| so much.
|
| Why can't we have dumb screens that I can plug my Amazon
| stick or whatever into.
|
| My girlfriend's TV actually crashes and randomly resets.
| Presumably because they cram a load of functionality in,
| and don't test (not so) edge cases.
|
| Just give me a dumb screen, if I want $fancy new
| streaming app I can just buy a single or whatever, if the
| dongle breaks, I replace just that.
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| Buy a computer monitor. Sadly, that only works up to a
| certain size, and price will not be your friend.
|
| Alternatively, a projector and quality screen.
| happytiger wrote:
| The key is that mechanical designs cannot be copyright locked
| and you cannot build a closed ecosystem and demand insane
| prices for access to that ecosystem.
|
| I feel like open source isn't the point, it's the solution.
| The point is that proprietary lock in creates artificial
| scarcity and allows protectionist rackets, and _open source_
| AND all mechanical systems counter this ugly consumer
| deleterious product choice that is incentivized by the
| _market effects_ of protectionist proprietary ethos.
| saulrh wrote:
| Reproducibility of mechanical objects is only the case in
| the modern day! It used to be that reproducing mechanical
| parts was difficult enough that a particularly
| sophisticated part could be just as locked-down as a
| particularly sophisticated bit of software is today.
|
| For an illustrative example, imagine that a part on your
| tractor suddenly became a bit of twisted, wrecked metal.
|
| These days? You ask someone else with the same tractor to
| send you some pictures, pull the part out and measure all
| the holes and their positions and tell you what the bearing
| surfaces are made of, you scrape off some slivers of the
| part and assay them to figure out what alloy it's made out
| of and how it was heat-treated, you go and machine a test
| piece or two on your mill and try it, you buy a bit of
| bronze bushing off mcmaster and it works, etc. Maybe
| someone else has already done this and published a CAD
| model and instructions! We have solutions for this.
|
| Back then? You have no designs. You have no way to
| communicate with other people who have a complete working
| part. You might be lucky enough to remember what bits the
| part connected to if you'd looked at it before. You may
| have some idea what the intended geometry was, but you're
| never going to figure out that the geometry is actually
| just _a few degrees off_ right angles because that keeps
| you out of a complicated kinematic singularity that blows
| up the part every time you turn left. You can guess at some
| of the materials, but systematic classifications of iron-
| carbon alloys don 't exist so all you can say is "it's some
| kind of steel". Even if you figure a lot of this out,
| there's no real way to write it down or share it with
| people because a lot of the terminology for representing
| this stuff _simply doesn 't exist_. Even if you make a
| functional part, its expected lifetime is months rather
| than decades.
|
| The original creator, by comparison, can just buy a new
| block of the right alloy from their supplier, throw the
| forging dies back on the presses and stamp out a blank,
| slap the blank into the jig that presents every hole to the
| drill press at exactly the right angle, put the part
| through their proprietary heat-treat process, and then ship
| you the result. Those dies and jigs and heat-treat
| protocols are _exactly_ the same kind of proprietary
| protection that a git repo full of source code is today.
|
| If you look at hydraulic and pneumatic fittings, you can
| see elements of this lock-in still extant in the modern
| world. Everyone had their own thread sizes and thread
| geometries for their own tools, getting them to
| interoperate was impossible unless you had the right
| adapters, and you _could not_ make the right adapters
| unless you were a dedicated specialist in hydraulic
| fittings. You were locked in to your tools provider 's
| pneumatic toolchain in _exactly_ the same way that people
| are currently locked in to their current power tool brand
| because they own $50k in tools and battery packs that agree
| that they 're made out of a specific manufacturer's 18650s
| with specific voltage drop and internal resistance and etc
| etc etc. (go watch the torque test channel's segment on
| battery adapters a bit, it's enlightening! -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgJI8Ikrd6Y).
| schiffern wrote:
| >they conclude that we should move back to old mechanical
| systems. But mechanical systems are not always more reliable.
|
| In general I agree, but I worry this glosses over the subtle
| cases in the middle.
|
| In a non-zero number of cases, the only reason electronics are
| "superior" to mechanical solutions is precisely because it's
| easy to enforce proprietary restrictions. In this subset of
| cases, it is proper to replace the electronic solution with a
| (here, superior) mechanical one. .
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Actually the lack of minimization of moving parts makes them
| superior. Friction's effect on wear and tear is real.
| schiffern wrote:
| I agree with the general principle.
|
| My point is, we should acknowledge that there are some
| cases "right on the edge" that would naturally favor
| mechanical instead of electronic solutions, but the ability
| to cheaply enforce proprietary restrictions pushed them
| "over the edge" to using an electronic solution instead.
|
| In these cases we should indeed consider replacing
| electronics with mechanical solutions -- if not for
| retrofit, at least for later product iterations.
| asdff wrote:
| Electronics have wear and tear too because at the end of
| the day it needs to run on some hardware. Solder joints are
| never built to last until the end of time, just to not lead
| to a lot of repair claims within the warranty period and
| any longer is an opportunity to cut costs for a future
| manager.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| I refurbish a whole lot of ewaste as part of my job, and
| with a few exceptions any time a device fails it's either
| the electrolytics in the power supply or something
| mechanical.
|
| Solid state electronics technically _can_ fail but their
| expected service life is an order of magnitude more than
| the mechanical stuff. Same with properly done solder
| joints. If they crack, it's either due to mechanical
| stresses (e.g. constant reinsertion on battery jacks) or
| it's a design fault (Xbox 360, PS3 cold solder).
| ksjskskskkk wrote:
| yall already internalized that optimizing for profit against
| everything else engineers do is right.
| bsder wrote:
| Electronic systems can _quite easily_ be far more reliable than
| mechanical systems.
|
| High voltage ignition systems are a really good example. I used
| to own a 1973 Buick LeSabre with a stupid low-voltage ignition
| system for "emissions control" purposes. Any water inside the
| engine compartment, and your engine would stall. Put a modern
| high-voltage ignition system on that and you could damn near
| submerge the engine and it would keep going.
|
| The problem here is a lack of interface standardization (for
| example: old school taillights all connected to bulbs the same
| way). If auto manufacturers were required to document interfaces
| and accept third party parts, they would have to design
| everything defensively and these kinds of silly issues would go
| away.
|
| The problem isn't electronics--it's engineering. And the problem
| isn't engineers--it's management cutting every corner they can.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Another issue is the physical layer of the CAN bus system.
|
| For something meant for automotive deployment in massive
| numbers I'm not particularly impressed with how the typical
| physical layer is implemented. There is relatively little
| margin for error and the topology is just designed for cost
| efficiency, not for reliability or redundancy.
| kube-system wrote:
| The conclusion in the title isn't justified by the content. Bad
| designs are bad designs, regardless of whether they're electronic
| systems or mechanical systems. Ford and Nissan have shipped
| plenty of mechanical systems that leave something to be desired.
|
| Funny enough, I had a Ford truck in the 80s that spent a week in
| the shop because a shorted taillight bulb caused the entire
| electrical system to misbehave. No CAN bus required.
|
| And, dealer only parts? That's hardly an 'electronics' issue. Try
| to replace anything other than body panels or drivetrain parts,
| and you'll find a lot of this.
| jacquesm wrote:
| In the case of drivetrain parts that may well be an anti-theft
| measure to make it harder for chopshops to sell drivetrain
| parts from stolen vehicles.
| kube-system wrote:
| Drivetrain parts are the easy things to find in the
| aftermarket, because they're wear parts, and people have to
| replace them to make the car go, so they're profitable to
| make.
|
| The kind of stuff that's hard to find in the aftermarket are
| things like oddball interior parts that don't need regular
| replacing.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, true. But what I meant (and failed to explain,
| apparently) that for instance a gearbox can be paired to a
| particular ECU and that the manufacturer does that to stop
| the gearbox from being sold separately from the engine,
| which makes it harder for a chopshop to do its thing
| because and engine without a serial number is kind of
| suspect but a gearbox (which, especially for a larger car
| can be quite expensive) would often be overlooked during an
| inspection. By tying the two together it now becomes
| mandatory to not only swap out the gearbox but _also_ the
| engine (or the ECU, but that 's not all that easy either).
|
| I've had a VW van stolen right from in front of my house
| and to this day it's a mystery to me how they did it, there
| was no glass so they must have had a key or a way to open
| the vehicle and those are fairly solid. You can't start the
| car unless you have a key with the right transponder in it
| and that transponder is known to the ECU. So you'd have to
| bring a key that works on the door, open the door, teach
| that key to the ECU (or swap out the whole thing) and then
| drive off with the car. But it was all done in a couple of
| minutes at most.
|
| It's 8 years ago now or so and I'm still looking for it,
| every time I see a long wheelbase silvergray VW with a
| camper roof my head turns all by itself to check the roof
| raises at the back (which is a very rare combination).
| kube-system wrote:
| Yes, there are also anti-theft features built into
| electronics on cars too. (There's also frustrating anti-
| theft features built into mechanical parts on cars too,
| e.g. locking lug nuts, fiddly key mechanisms, parts with
| hard to access or nonexistent fasteners, etc)
|
| But also, most vehicles don't really technically have
| ECUs anymore, despite that name sticking around in common
| use. Most stuff in the past 30 years has a PCM, because
| there's a lot of features that makes sense to coordinate
| between the engine and transmission in a modern car.
|
| Even back in the 90's heyday of EFI engine tuning, one
| often had to be conscious of which transmission their
| "ECU" was expecting, because some transmission features
| were staring to get integrated into the engine control
| logic.
|
| The simplest explanation for the missing van is a thief
| with a tow truck :). e.g.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcE8nmDNEDw
| jacquesm wrote:
| Your explanation may well be the right one, never figured
| on that but it makes good sense.
|
| The transmission issue bit me a while ago, I had a
| transmission rebuilt and as a part of the service they
| replaced an electronics board that had some exposure to
| lubricant on account of a broken seal. But it was keyed
| to the engine of the car and we had a really hard time
| getting the car to recognize the rebuilt transmission, in
| the end the old board was put back in and everything
| worked flawlessly. But that was a ton of extra work. ('97
| MB E-class kombi). Lesson learned there, 'if it works
| don't fix it'.
| jancsika wrote:
| > And, dealer only parts? That's hardly an 'electronics' issue.
|
| _If resistance differs among any of six coils, halt._
|
| That sounds like a software issue to me. It prevented him from
| replacing a single faulty coil, and required him to buy and
| replace all six at the same time. So that's dinging him with
| dealer part markup plus 5x the dealer part price!
| kube-system wrote:
| I am saying that "dealer parts" aren't a frustration that is
| caused by electronics. They're caused by the aftermarket not
| making them.
|
| The design of Nissan's fault detection doesn't have anything
| to do with it being a dealer part. Something dumb like a
| cupholder is 99% of the time going to be a dealer only part.
|
| And on top of all of that, it's not like 'electronics' is
| enabling Nissan to force you replace all the coils.
| Automakers have done this mechanically for decades too. Just
| make it a single part: https://www.amazon.com/ENA-Compatible-
| Econoline-Thunderbird-...
| thefourthchime wrote:
| I'm not a mechanic, but I'm an amateur mechanic as far as my
| YouTube viewing goes, and I've never heard of this. Plenty of
| people I watch, get junkie, old cars, and all kinds of things to
| fix but this one hasn't come up.
|
| Is it possible? I'm sure, does it happen all the time I'm
| somewhat suspicious.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, it's absolutely possible. You have a whole slew of stuff
| connected to that bus and if it shorts out then it can take
| other parties connected to the same bus with it depending on
| what is shorted out and how.
|
| What you think of as a taillight is actually a couple of micro
| computers, a DC-DC converter and a whole bunch of LEDs,
| connectors and so on on it's own circuit board with potentially
| a bunch of other IO for the safety features mentioned in TFA
| which could basically be anything. So all of that lives on the
| secondary can bus (which can have 10's of clients). Short out
| that bus in a creative way and you may well end up creating a
| nasty cascade of issues that run from one end of the car to the
| other. _Normally_ this shouldn 't happen. But the potential is
| there. In my car - fortunately - I just have regular
| lightbulbs. They're a pain to change out because of how the
| front and the back of the car are constructed but the worst
| they can do is blow a fuse. I keep a very small socket and
| driver in the car just in case I have to do that on the road
| because without the right tools it is impossible. And even with
| the tools it is a 20 minute job.
| Animats wrote:
| > But the potential is there.
|
| Which it shouldn't be. This isn't an electric car. All you
| have is 12VDC. Every connection should be able to tolerate
| +-12VDC without damage.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Those taillights have their own LED drivers and not rarely
| they pulse the LEDs with far more than twelve volts to get
| them to be brighter. The pulses are super short so they
| don't damage the LEDs. I don't have any idea if the Ford in
| the article uses that trick but I've seen it on a couple of
| other cars as well. Usually they are simple DC/DC
| converters using buck-boost drivers to make the higher
| voltage. Moisture (tail light leak mentioned in TFA) could
| lead to that voltage being present on the bus (at low
| current, but those bus drivers are puny).
|
| https://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/lp8868v-q1.pdf?ts=1701522
| 7...
|
| Datasheet of a typical driver. So 60+ V out, nice little
| series inductor, 6A peak current on pulses a few ns wide.
| That'll do it, though the best CAN bus drivers on the
| market could easily sustain that without damage I'm pretty
| sure that not all of them would and I've seen them give up
| the ghost in e-bikes from transients (CAN is used in
| e-bikes extensively, both for the main components (battery,
| motor, UI) as well as for auxiliaries (front and rear
| lights, charger).
|
| On another note: the price for the repair is ridiculous,
| but that's mostly because anything involving a transistor
| from a car brand is marked up 1,000%. Boards that don't
| cost more than $20 to make sell for hundreds of $, and
| replacing them is going to be a ton of work because of how
| it's all put together. A (sealed) taillight assembly could
| easily be $800. Headlights are usually even more expensive.
|
| In general, about Ford: great when it works. But fragile
| and bad engineering on plenty of parts, notably: light
| assemblies, various braces (including the one that holds up
| your transmission, don't ask me how I know about that),
| trim pieces and most of the interior. Engines are great,
| it's almost like they are designed and built by a different
| company. Warranty is a ridiculous back-and-forth on things
| that are clear manufacturing or even engineering faults and
| you, the customer end up in the middle (and usually pay for
| the privilege). I had an F150 in Canada, and I liked it
| from the utility perspective but the reliability wasn't
| there and Ford as a company utterly sucks and will never
| see another dime from me.
|
| 25 years ago Ford was one of the biggest brands here, today
| they have a negligible market share in the personal vehicle
| segment.
|
| https://allecijfers.nl/auto/ford/
|
| Down 75% from their peak in the 80's, I would not be
| surprised at all if at some point they pull out of the
| market altogether.
| Animats wrote:
| > (Ford) Engines are great, it's almost like they are
| designed and built by a different company.
|
| They were. Ford had not only an Engine Division, but a
| separate V-8 Engine Division. Both were their own
| fiefdoms with their own management. To this day, Ford has
| separate self-contained engine plants. GM is divided up
| differently, with foundries that do hot metal work for
| multiple parts of the vehicle. No idea how Stellantis
| does things.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Ah, that explains quite a bit. Thank you for that bit of
| insight, I knew about Ford SP for the racing world and
| crate engines but never realized that the division ran
| much deeper than that.
|
| A friend of mine spooned a Ford V8 crate engine into a
| _Midget_ and the result is as much fun as it is
| dangerous. Also the shortest clutch throw on any car I
| 've ever seen, from fully engaged to fully free in about
| 1" of travel on the pedal. The firewall had to be cut out
| and the engine lives for a considerable portion in what
| used to be the interior :)
| bastard_op wrote:
| Try working on a car where every vendor still, after obd2
| regulation still wants their electronics.
|
| Now that every vendor wants to glue a tablet to their dashboard
| and a 3/4g radio to watch everything I do, it's even worse.
|
| I really don't think I'll buy a new car again.
| shimonabi wrote:
| He might be a brilliant mechanic, but he sounds just like my
| paranoid anti-vax coworker when he starts talking about the BRICS
| currency. The solutions are open standards and documentation, not
| going back to the stone age.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| Really not sure about this dude's, like... thing, but I
| absolutely agree that cars have reached a point of almost
| complete unmaintainability. It wouldn't be such a bad thing if
| they were engineered in a fault tolerant way, but they aren't.
| Their electrical systems are brittle as dry spaghetti, completely
| finicky and relying on very small margins to prevent basically
| frying everything.
|
| I have a 1987 Toyota pickup, a 1983 Toyota Land Cruiser, a 1989
| BMW 325i and a 1974 BMW 2002, a 2022 Toyota Tacoma and I used to
| have a 2021 Ford Transit.
|
| Of all of those cars, the only one that had electrical issues was
| my Transit. Twice in fact. Once right after I bought it. The
| cluster went belly up. Then again with the driving lights on the
| left side of the van which would intermittently not work. Dealer
| couldn't figure it out. I couldn't figure it out.
|
| They wanted to start playing the game of just start replacing
| everything until the lights work again. Knowing the quality of
| modern Ford mechanics, I opted out knowing they'd probably break
| something else in the process of playing whackamole with my car.
| It wasn't a serious issue, just obnoxious.
|
| Modern cars that have electrical issues cannot be fixed. Whoever
| is responsible for this change of things should be dragged out
| and shot. It's criminally wasteful.
| kube-system wrote:
| > It wouldn't be such a bad thing if they were engineered in a
| fault tolerant way, but they aren't.
|
| There are multiple CAN specs, but fault tolerance is a built-in
| part of some of them... enough that you can cut a wire entirely
| and it'll still work. That beats any analog vehicle electrical
| systems. Although, if it costs a penny more, I'd bet Ford cuts
| that corner.
| tyingq wrote:
| > Modern cars that have electrical issues cannot be fixed.
|
| Some of it is just "volume" too. When you scale up the amount
| of wires and connections so much that formerly easy problems
| become impossible. Things like a somewhat buried wire getting
| some exhaust heat because a plastic retainer failed, or a
| squirrel getting into the engine compartment and chewing. You
| can sort that out in a car with dozens of circuits, but it's
| harder when there's hundreds.
| Animats wrote:
| The video he refers to about the $5000 repair for a taillight
| problem.[1]
|
| This is a parts cost problem. Each tailight assembly has some
| LEDs, a control module with a CANbus interface, and a rear-
| obstacle radar sensor. Two of those are over $5000.
|
| No way do those parts cost $5000 to make.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUkFsuilVD0
| rini17 wrote:
| But the failure has spread to other electronics. Does not
| surprise anyone who knows how bad the car software is.
| cracrecry wrote:
| As engineer and entrepreneur in the digital space I am biased,
| but I believe what this man is saying does not make lots of
| sense. It remembers me the analog photography guys buying analog
| gear because this "crazy digital thing could not last". People
| will always love the grain and so on.
|
| The key of the issue are proprietary designs. Cars' tech is
| established and hence a commodity, easier than ever to replace
| things thanks to technology like computers, 3d scanners and 3d
| printers. That made possible lots of third parties selling you
| repair pieces without having to pay an arm and a leg for the
| official part.
|
| The future are electronic cars, battery or hydrogen or ammonia,
| because it just way simpler and better.
|
| With electronics you can make entire designs open source, so you
| are not dependent of the seller of your car, but you can also
| make the interface specifications open which is the really
| important thing.
|
| The IBM PC was an example of open interface specifications.
| Anybody could build new cards and insert it on the slots and
| start using it.
|
| You do not need going back to mechanical systems. You need open
| specification of interfaces so different companies could compete
| on equal terms.
| genman wrote:
| Start is fair but ends in conspiracy rambling.
| avar wrote:
| This is unintentionally a good example of someone who's aged out
| of his profession because he's not curious about how things
| really work anymore, despite the lengthy intro claiming the exact
| opposite.
|
| He was repairing a Nissan Maxima, and either got an alert about a
| bad coil, or one coil was just entirely dead. He then wanted to
| replace just that bad coil.
|
| This is after he was told they should all be replaced, note how
| he never thought to even ask "why?" at that point, just assuming
| "what do they know? I've done this before!".
|
| He then finds that the car's computer checks all the coils, and
| just proceeds to alert on the next coil shortly thereafter.
|
| This isn't because each coil has some DRM module to make you put
| another dollar in, but the engine is checking the performance of
| the coils, presumably it's picking up on something as simple as
| resistance mismatch.
|
| So he blames the car, computers, the modern economy etc, and
| finally ends with some conspiracy theory about how BRICS are
| going to replace the USD as the world's reserve currency.
|
| There's lots of little annoyances related to the modern CAN-bus
| in cars, but not this sort of thing. If he'd gone with his
| initial plan the customer would have unknowingly ended up with a
| car where the performance of each cylinder differed, which can
| lead to subtle and more major mechanical issues down the road.
|
| It's also perfectly fine to just replace the one coil, get check
| "check engine" light, and just explain that problem to the
| customer. If they only want to spend $100 and not $100 times the
| number of cylinders that's their decision.
|
| But whatever the issue is, it's not that the computer notices
| that the engine's performance is abnormal, and alerts you about
| it.
| rini17 wrote:
| So you have no problem with junking cars that are most likely
| completely fine mechanically? Just because electronics is
| poorly made, prone to chain failure or because software does
| not support replacing some parts that otherwise could be
| replaced? Maybe having slightly different performance on one
| cylinder is completely fine. But with all the proprietary
| stuff, we aren't allowed to even ask!
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